TV Remains Campaign King

By Mark Joyella 

Last week, Republican presidential candidate Chris Christie made a major ad buy–$250,000–to run Christie’s first ad (right) on Fox News. Christie, set to be on stage for Fox’s upcoming GOP debate, does not want anything to damage his standing in national polls. And the answer for the Christie campaign was to turn to the time-honored and decades-old medium of TV.

Evan Tracey, senior vice president at National Media Inc., a GOP TV-buying firm, told Politico “for the most part, voters tend to be 35 and older. These are the people who statistically vote the most. So that’s why you still see TV as your biggest megaphone.”

Broadcast and cable television may be widely considered to be in decline, but the 2016 campaign is still on track to set a record for television advertising, writes Politico’s Steven Shepard:

Advertisement

Between campaigns and independent groups, television-ad spending during the 2016 elections is projected to top $4.4 billion. That’s more than a half-billion more than in 2012. And it’s at least four times what campaigns and groups are preparing to spend on their online strategies.

Targeted digital and social buys are increasingly important in finding and motivating voters, but the dollars don’t compare to good old fashioned TV. “It’s very difficult to spend massive amounts of money on digital,” said Elizabeth Wilner, a senior vice president at Kantar and former NBC News political director. “It’s cheap.”

Advertisement